Acousmates

An acoustic electric guitar belongs to the acoustic family rather than electric guitar family. Electric acoustic guitars are steel string guitars which are fitted with pickups rather than using a separate microphone like an acoustic model.

The pickups are piezoelectric pickups, Piezoelectric pickups are best known as the under saddle pickups used to amplify acoustic guitars. Sometimes seen referred to as “Electrets” and the first company to design crystal pickups was Brush Development Company in the 1910′s although they never actually made them themselves commercially but rather licensed the concept. Piezoelectric pickups are pickups that create a signal through its actual vibration.

They are regarded as acoustic guitars rather than electric guitars because the pickups do not produce a signal directly from the vibration of the strings, but rather from the vibration of the guitar top or body. Guitarists have long been troubled by electric acoustic amplification, which tends to suffer from excessive feedback and poor sound quality. Many traditional piezo electric acoustics produce a poor ribbon transducer sound that does not necessarily replicate a true acoustic sound. Read the rest of this entry »

Did you know that when you picked up your acoustic guitar, you’re picking up an instrument with 5,000 years of history attached to it? Acoustic guitars are descendants of stringed instruments that were found in a variety of cultures thousands and thousands of years ago. As civilizations merged and the world became smaller, the guitar began taking on a unified shape and style. Since then, there has been a lineal evolution of several hundreds of years of instruments that can be directly compared to today’s acoustic guitars.

The Medieval Period

During the Medieval Period of European history, there were several different forms of guitars. These guitars had between three and five strings and were much smaller than the guitars we know today. There were variations of these instruments which had pairs of strings, known as courses. The popular guitars of this period were commonly separated into two groupings. The first, the Guitarra Latina was likely developed from Spain, while the Guitarra Morisca was brought to Spain by the Moorish culture. Read the rest of this entry »

From a player’s point of view, playing guitar is a lot of fun. Nothing compares to it and one can never learn too much about it. Simply speaking the more you play, the better you get and the more you enjoy it.

But for the aspiring player, starting comes with a dilemma…
“What’s the best way to learn guitar?”, “What are the differences between playing acoustic guitar and playing electric guitar?” These are two of the most common questions beginning guitarists are faced with.

Acoustic guitars and electric guitars are different in the way they are built and played but they are identical as far as the fretboard is concerned. The scales and chords are in exactly the same places. Both guitars are played by picking, plucking or strumming. The sound of an acoustic guitar resonates out of its body via the sound-hole and an electric guitar has to be plugged into an amplifier.

Acoustic guitars usually have heavier gauge strings and that means you will need to develop a little more strength in your fretting hand in order to play an acoustic guitar. However this will be to your advantage if you ever decide to play on an electric guitar. You’ll be very much at ease as most electric guitars are fitted with lighter gauge strings that are more flexible. Read the rest of this entry »